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Letter From The Editor: Boxing Day

Today is Boxing Day in large parts of the English-speaking world, but it is not celebrated in these United States nor should it be. That would be un-American.

We should leave Boxing Day to the Australians, British, Canadians and others in the Commonwealth of Nations whose governments include Queen Elizabeth as their sovereign.

Since we opted to go with a little event called The Revolution, which we won fair and square, we do not have to participate.

We do not have do make up a hierarchy, place ourselves somewhere within it, and then trade places or expect to receive gift boxes from the higher ups or send them ourselves.

In other words, Boxing Day could not exist in American because we lack the required inversion. It is not our way. Equality trumps Boxing Day any day of the week.

We should therefore be on the lookout for what I call the class-pushers. Big-time class pushers are ABC, NBC, and CBS news. They are shoving the next royal wedding down our throats just as the class-pushers always do.

Just as they do with reality television, the news divisions of these major networks are packaging and selling a storyline that without their promotion Americans would not give a twit about. Who cares if a helicopter pilot in the royal family is marrying a woman who bounces along behind him like a poodle?

The job they are doing in pumping air into the royal wedding story will detract from more newsworthy events. Put the royal coverage against the time the over-the-air networks gave to either the food safety bill or the child nutrition act, and I think you will see the gap.

There are other class-pushers, of course. Those pushers of a “middle class” tax cut certainly count. They are the class-pushers who did the real damage. Because of them, everybody–rich and poor–had to get a tax cut at the very moment in limp fiscal history that everybody should be paying more.

Think of the signal that would have been sent to the markets and those who hold our nearly $14 trillion debt if President Obama and Sen. Mitch McConnell had come forward with a statement on how everybody has to pay more.

We’ve always done our best when there is no attempt to divide us. During that dark Christmas Eve of 1941, coming just three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt opened his remarks with these words: “Fellow Workers For Freedom.”

He might just as well have said: “We are all in this now, aren’t we?”

So, we will pass on Boxing Day and class -pushers, and look in 2011 to those who have the guts to approach us all as Americans who are all in this together.

Dan,
m
Really interesting post. So do this mean that FSN will not be staffing the royal wedding?
a

John

Until reading this article, I had never heard any mention of any of these “news” stories. I don’t get my news from television. Dan, you are the one who has shoved it down my throat. If you don’t want them in the news, then please don’t post an article about them at foodsafetyNEWS.
Thanks…

deborah

Phooey, I loved your post. Am sending two favorite poems:
1.
“Out of Ireland have we come,
great hatred, little room,
maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
a fanatic heart.
William Butler Yeats
2.
“There is always something to do.
There are hungry people to feed,
naked people to clothe,
sick people to comfort and make well.
And while I don’t expect you to save the world
I do think it’s not asking too much
for you to love those with whom you sleep,
share the happiness of those whom you call friend,
engage those among you who are visionary
and remove from your live
those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”
Nikki Giovanni